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Sunday 4th March. What do you get if you cross a pointless cretin with a Range Rover?

The Pointless-Cretin arrived to collect Annabelle for her fortnightly ‘Audience With Her Father’ yesterday.

I spent the next half an hour assuming the crash position. Head between my knees, fighting an attractive blend of pure rage, nausea and oxygen deficiency.

This is not because of the fact that he arrived late.

Again.

Nor is it because, on arriving outside the house he ignorantly ‘beep-beep-beep-ed’ his horn instead of going to the effort of unfurling his designer clad leggies, and actually alighting from his vehicle to ring on the doorbell of our dwelling.

These are but minor and predictable irritants to which I have long ago become immune.

The reason that blood began pouring out of my ears is that he swept into our little close driving a brand new, eighty grand Range Rover.

Six pounds a week he contributes to Annabelle’s life, and I had to fight tooth and nail to mobilise the Child Support Agency (CSA), or whatever it is they call themselves these days, to insist on that.

Apparently he doesn’t earn enough to offer a single penny more than that.

In actual fact he earns plenty.

Utilising a loop-hole created by the setting up of his own business, he (as a Director) gets to pay himself a pepper-corn salary and extract the rest of his wonga via directors dividends and other under-the-table manouvres.

When you’re a director, the purchase of a three foot wide plasma screen becomes ‘a new computer monitor,’ the sixteenth shopping trip to New York becomes ‘a business trip’, meals out, new designer threads for himself, iPads, iPods and iPhones, become money extracted straight from his business as expenses, and tax-free at that.

The CSA are only interested in his ‘payslip.’

Since he writes that to himself and is probably around twenty pounds a month or somesuch, it’s all a bit of a farce.

The Government seem to be singularly incapable of acting in any meaningful way to force McDads to pony up and financially support their children. What I want to know is, in this day and age, with these times of austerity upon us, how can Cameron and Clegg justify tax-payers up and down the country being asked to foot the bill for helping struggling single-mums in the raising of these discarded children?

Statisticians frequently let us know how much it costs to raise a child from birth to eighteen years old, it’s a quantifiable sum of money.

It isn’t a ‘how long is a piece of string’ equation.

From John ‘O’ Groats to Lands End, kids don’t need to eat less, nor do they need fewer clothes or baths.

Kids need food, shelter, clothing, heat and light, not to mention childcare so that Mum can go back to work and not be constantly labelled ‘a drain on society’ by the very same lofty Government officials who are happily standing by as this absolute travesty continues.

Calculate how much that costs, divide it in two and make the lazy, irresponsible sods pay it.

In some states in America, failure to pay child support lands you in jail.

Priorities need to be gotten straight around here, and perhaps the threat of jail would encourage dead-beat dads the country over to hastily re-evalute whether a flashy motor, that extra pint of beer and Ibiza-ing it up real nice are worth the time they’ll spend behind bars if they continue to ignore the responsibility that they themselves created.

Someone has to foot the bill, why precisely should the average tax-payer whom, in addition to having quite enough on their own plates at the moment, never met Annabelle’s pointless cretin of a father and certainly didn’t agree to buy him a new Range Rover.

High time these men learned to lie in their beds as they made them, because, say what you like about single mums, (the fifty per cent of the child producing partnership that actually stayed with their kids) the reality is that the majority of them are just trying their best to bring their children up the best way they know how and more importantly, are financially able to.

It’s high-days and holidays for these so-called ‘fathers’ with nary a cloud in their blue, blue sky.

10 thoughts on “Sunday 4th March. What do you get if you cross a pointless cretin with a Range Rover?”

Sometimes this country really sucks. Are you eligible for Legal Aid? I’m sure a solicitor could sort the cretin out good and proper. At the end of the day though, you’ve got a gorgeous daughter to love and be loved by – I’m pretty sure a Range Rover doesn’t come with that benefit… xx

I am with you Single Mum. Reading your post has made my blood boil ! same here with the “non resident parent” (do have a better name for him !) – and even worse when he has a new family. My child seeing the hundreds of pounds spent on his new son and she is lucky even if he remembers her birthday. And now I hear the happy couple are riding around in cars with personalised number plates…… I only hope Karma will prevail at some point ! grrrrrrrrrr

to be honest, i’m pretty speechless about this. I’m seriously outraged at the “cretin” – and Ally… I am astounded and thoroughly devastated for your daughter.
Having said that, my daughter’s father is a drug & gambling addicted paranoid schizophrenic (certified! I really know how to pick them) who i won’t allow to contribute (although a fiver a week is a bit pityful anyway in my opinion – i’d rather not have it) or see his daughter for obvious reasons… so i suppose i can’t really comment… but i have lol xxxx

Ladies are these the same cretins that bleat on about what good fathers they are? Think we need a system like the states. Where they go to jail if they don’t pay.
And I agree with Mrs Y – book please!!! I know you are super busy but some more posts wouldn’t go amiss either!

As a single mom I am here with you . It’s ridiculous that we have to deal with dead beat dads. I live in America and yes you are right we send the dads to jail that don’t pay child support. But alot of mothers don’t get their fair share either. However in my case my daughter’s father was deported . So I can’t fight for child support. It’s ridiculous , he can go back to his country and make another live and family . He supports them. But my daughter gets no help! It’s the children that suffer the most. I can also only hope that Karma bites him in the butt.